Seeing

"...he simply stretched out his hands to touch the glass, he knew that his image was there watching him, his image could see him, he could not see his image."

-- Blindness, by José Saramago

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Having hit every tick on my scribbled list of places to see in the city, I made my way yet again to the library I used yesterday. I say "used" because I walk in, ask for a day pass, and puddle-jump from vacant computer to vacant computer, searching sites and slowly--to let time pass, to kill time as it passes--taking care of banal business. I need work to start, stat.

I am willing to admit to many personal failings, and one of them is how I handle myself so desperately in relationships, especially when I'm bored and alone enough to get anxious. God, I can be a menace. Best to stay quiet, sometimes, to qualm, to kick yourself into neutral and coast, to fall from the branch and feel the wind of gravity cooing and cooling your mind, to remember where the earth is. Best not to nudge, silly boy, but to feel a fresh book's smooth binding, to watch the leaves dally in the wind, to remember there are four seasons and they all come and go, entrances and exits, and you must be a swinging door (and all that) for your own sake. And for the other.

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Sara showed me the haunts yesterday and we caught an indie flick at the Esquire. Woody Allen's new one, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is actually pretty good (much better than Melinda and Melinda), and I left the cine and the night fulfilled.

Spent most of today at an art museum in Eden Park and in the park itself, wandering in flip-flops in search of shade. A group of actors rehearsed in the amphitheatre down the hill and I ate my McDonald's on the grass by a tree and read more of Blindness. Watched a woodcarving exhibit video in the museum and was amused to see a field trip of grade-schoolers pointing and peering at the works, checking off each tick on their scavenger hunt lists. I wonder how much I'm still a kid, a bright-eyed first-timer in an immense place of art and life and zips and zaps, just trying to see all there is to see.

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"That night the blind man dreamt that he was blind."

-- Blindness